He shakes The Way to Cook by the spine to release anything that might be hiding inside.
A white envelope falls out.
He slides it across the counter to me. “Love note?”
I stare at the return address: 798 W. Wilson, Chicago.
“That’s my old address,” I say.
I hesitate for half a second, inspecting the seal, then tear it open.
Dear Mrs. Child,
I like your cookbook. I’ve been staying late at work to make your stuff. The Chicken Marengo was all right, just like you said. I’ve decided to make all your recipes, even the Deviled Rabbit. Sounds weird, but I bet it’s not. Not sure where I’ll find the ingredients to make everything . . . I’m going to open my own restaurant, one day, be my own boss. Maybe you’ll come. I’ll need someone to prep the desserts. You?
—Joyce Fellows, O’Hara’s House of Fine Eats, Chicago
The letter is stamped but was never mailed.
“Was I right?” the salesman asks, leaning toward me.
“Love note,” I say, mostly to myself. I look at the four dollars he’s placed on the counter for me, reach across, and pull the cookbooks back to my side.
JULY 6
Cal
“T.E.L.L. T.H.O.S.E. B.L.U.E.B.E.R.R.I.E.S. T.H.E.R.E. A.R.E. R.E.A.L. P.E.O.P.L.E. D.O.W.N. H.E.R.E. L.I.K.E. T.H.E. G.I.R.L. A.N.D. H.E.R. M.O.M.”
Sandy is Morse-ing to someone, but it’s not me. I’ve stopped Morse-ing. It’s dangerous. Now I just watch. I only see his side of the conversation. I don’t know if there is another side.
“O.F. C.O.U.R.S.E. I.M. K.E.E.P.I.N.G. A.N. E.Y.E. O.N. T.H.E.M.”
I think he’s through, but then:
“I.T. W.O.U.L.D. B.E. M.U.C.H. E.A.S.I.E.R. I.F. Y.O.U. W.E.R.E. W.I.T.H. M.E. D.A.R.L.I.N.G.”
Darling?
“T.H.E. B.O.Y. I.S. H.E.L.P.I.N.G. E.N.O.R.M.O.U.S.L.Y. T.O.O. H.E. I.S. P.R.O.B.A.B.L.Y. F.O.L.L.O.W.I.N.G. T.H.I.S. E.X.C.H.A.N.G.E.”
Am I “the boy”?
“H.E.L.L.O.—I really shouldn’t reply but—W.H.O. E.L.S.E. I.S. O.U.T. H.E.R.E.?”
Long, dark pause.
“J.U.S.T. U.S. M.R. A.N.D. M.R.S. P.A.G.L.I.O.”
I nearly trip over my own feet as I spin left, then right, toward the green house.
Mrs. Paglio? The Paglios?
But that means the guy across the street in the red van is . . . And, if I had X-ray vision, I would see a cabbage-shaped person on the other side of my closet wall, standing at her window with a flashlight, exhausting her thumb, just like me.
I’ve only seen Mr. Paglio in his car and in the driveway, taking down the trash. Dark hair, tidy suit shaped like a butternut squash . . . I think of the portrait outside the Paglios’ mudroom.
Mr. Paglio. Sandy.
Sandy. Mr. Paglio.
“W.H.A.T.’S. G.O.I.N.G. O.N.?” I Morse.
Another long pause.
“M.A.R.I.T.A.L. D.I.S.C.O.R.D. C.A.L.L. O.F. T.H.E. W.I.L.D. V.S. C.A.L.L. O.F. . . . W.H.A.T. W.O.U.L.D. Y.O.U. C.A.L.L. Y.O.U.R. N.E.E.D. T.O. S.T.A.Y. F.A.N.C.Y. D.E.A.R.?” He doesn’t wait for her answer. “M.O.R.S.E. H.E.L.P.S. U.S. F.I.G.H.T. N.I.C.E. I.T.S. R.O.M.A.N.T.I.C.”
“D.O.E.S. J.E.A.N.N.E. A.N.N. K.N.O.W.?”
Sandy, Mr. Paglio, who is not a criminal mastermind, or a homeless person, has no fast answer to this. “N.O.”—he Morses, finally—“A.N.D. F.O.R. H.E.R. O.W.N. G.O.O.D. L.E.T.S. N.E.V.E.R. T.E.L.L.”
JULY 7
Jeanne Ann
Cal finds me on a bench the next morning near the vans. I’ve brought a stack of Mom’s cookbooks, to see what other secrets she’s keeping from me. I feel different from yesterday. Like the sun might rise at night and go down in the morning. Like I can’t trust anything.
Mom’s cooking food named Marengo.
She wants to own a restaurant, not just cook.
There is no sock-matching Sam in San Francisco.
I was wondering when Cal would show. It’ll be easier to punch him if he steps right up.
Cal’s mom owns a fancy restaurant.
I don’t really know what to do with all this deceit.
I’m studying my fists. I really want a hoagie. I really want a couch. I really want to hit something.
I sneak a look at Cal, sitting at the far end of the bench, biting his lip to keep from speaking.
Smart move.
In the field to our right, the Bumblebees play capture the flag, but the game is temporarily suspended: Bad Chuck has stolen the counselors’ megaphone and is darting around the cones, making loud reverb sounds that ring out across the green.
“It’s my mom’s restaurant, not mine,” Cal bursts out.
I flip open one of Mom’s cookbooks and scan a page like I don’t hear him.
“Your mom could apply at Greenery again. Mac will understand. Mom will understand now that they’ve met. They’ll skip the work-history forms.”
“It’s not the forms.” I don’t look up.
“It isn’t?”
“She doesn’t want the job.”
“She doesn’t?”
“No.” I flip the page to a picture of a man slicing open a fresh fig. “She wants it, but she doesn’t.” I shake my head at this sentence. “Haven’t you ever wanted something that took a lot of steps to get, and you just felt you should get to skip the steps and have it, because you deserved it?”
“Um.”
“Also, she’s got a job already.”
The fig in the book looks like a human heart. This book’s not by Julia Child, who’s normal and funny. She says stuff like: “The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook.” The book with the fig picture has sentences like: “We lunched on foraged fiddle ferns, swelled soufflés, and heirloom lettuces tangled like exquisite limbs.” Who writes like that? “Exquisite limbs” reminds me of novels I had to re-shelve at the Sulzer branch library in Chicago, in the romance section. On those covers, muscly men were always running through fire, rescuing ladies with flowing hair—and the book covers advertised “passionate love affairs.” Mrs. Jablonsky says romance novels are for people who believe in “extreme” happy endings. What does it say about Mom that she likes practical Julia Child and this “exquisite limbs” junk? Is it another reason I’m living out here?
A field away, Bad Chuck puts a counselor in a headlock. By megaphone he announces that he wants a two-hundred-dollar ransom for this person, “cash.”
I feel like I’ve been kidnapped too, in a way. Would anyone pay my ransom?
“I think my mom wishes I were more like that kid,” Cal says.
Cal’s trying to change the subject, make me smile. It’s almost working. I hide behind the cookbook, but I can feel him staring at me.
“I screwed up,” he says. “I thought you wouldn’t like me if you knew we owned Greenery.”
He may be right. I might not have. “Who says I like you?”
“Um. I do?”
It’s true that his lie is so much smaller than Mom’s—it’s like a gnat next to a dinosaur. I can’t work up the same froth.
“No more secrets,” I say, smacking his hand, because I need to hit someone and touch someone too.
“No more secrets,” he says, wobbling a bit as he does.
Cal
I scoot closer on the bench. She’s not as mad as I thought she’d be. I think she was even keeping an eye out, maybe wondering when I’d show.
“Have you watched more Julia Child?” she asks, still not turning all the way to face me. She’s looking at her mom’s cookbooks.
“No. Not since you were over.”
“I wasn’t over.”
“Right.” Right.
“She’s okay.” Jeanne Ann picks at the wood of the bench, pulling up a long splinter. “Th
e next episode is about eggs.”
“How do you know?”
“They announced it at the end of the last episode,” she says. “You watch them in order, right?” She finally looks up, concerned. She was really paying attention.
“You want to learn how to make eggs?” I ask.
“No. Yeah. I just wanna see. How Julia does it.” Jeanne Ann’s face is suddenly tight, not quite angry, but definitely on the verge of something.
Back at the house, Julia Child fills the screen, a giantess waving around a spatula. “The egg can be your best friend,” she explains, “if you just give it the right break.”
Jeanne Ann is in the doorway, legs outside, arms in. I should tell her about Sandy right now while she’s in a decent mood. Get it over with. Sandy is Mr. Paglio. Sandy is not your homeless neighbor. And it’s all for your own good, I promise.
Now doesn’t feel right. Never feels more right.
I can see she’s making mental notes as she watches the screen. Her lips are moving. About an hour in, she calls me over with a tilt of her head and slaps a piece of paper in my hand. “No secrets,” she says, before she lets go.
It’s a letter—whoa—from her mom to Julia Child.
Jeanne Ann
Mom, if you could have your own restaurant, what would it be?
—JA
Cal’s hovering in the doorway, reading over my shoulder as I write to Mom. I’ve chucked several bad first drafts. I want to keep it short. I want a question that gets me everything. He keeps tearing fresh sheets from his sketchbook for me. It’s nearly dark. My butt hurts. Before this, we watched twelve Julia Child episodes.
Cal keeps saying “This is a very big deal, a very big deal.” He’s pacing. He thinks Mom’s letter to Julia Child shows that she’s serious about cooking.
“I told you she was serious,” I say.
“Yeah, but you also said you had no idea if she was good.”
“She could be serious and not good.”
“That’s true. But she doesn’t write like someone who’s not good.”
I agree with that. Her letter to Julia Child, though unsent, is very . . . confident. Like they’re equals.
“Jeanne Ann, listen,” Cal says, pulling me up to standing. The trees are swaying their last daylight shadows. “You need to get out of the van into a real place. You need a real address.”
“I know that.” I can’t help it, I snap at him a little.
“You also need your mom to cook, like she wants to. At a restaurant.”
“Thank you for helping me keep the facts straight, Cal.” I am tempted to stomp on his toes.
“I’m not trying to make you feel bad. I’m just trying to say, you want this. Being part of a restaurant is—it’s good. The doors are always open and you go and it’s like you’ve been written into a long story that repeats and repeats. And it’s always warm and clean.” His voice is getting louder. “And it always smells good. And you’re always meeting new characters who love it too.” He’s waving his arms around his head like he’s having some kind of religious experience. “And you’re taken care of. Completely and always. If I fell off my chair at Greenery, hit my head, slept for a hundred years, and woke up, there’d be a waiter in a tie hovered over me, sprinkling water on my face, and he’d be just as friendly and helpful as the waiter from a hundred years before. And he’d be carrying the same ingredients—onions, garlic, butter, salt—because they’re in everything good. And he’d ask me if I was okay and tip me right into my chair and sweep a napkin across my lap and fill my water glass and do all of that in exchange for a little money at the end of the night.”
“Cal—” He is not describing O’Hara’s House of Fine Eats. He is describing another planet of restaurant.
“Outside the restaurant”—he keeps going, keeps pacing, but faster—“there are loud cars and people marching with their heads down. I could collapse on the sidewalk and people might walk right by. I could be thirsty and no one would think to pour me a glass of water. I could be cold, and no one would offer to turn up the temperature. Not even for—”
“Cal,” I interrupt again. “Calm down.”
“I’m just saying—I just want you to know—it’s all worth it. It’ll be worth it.”
It’s been a long day. My eyes are gritty and throbbing. “I heard you. You sound—” Passionate. Delusional. Cal’s life is not my life. I’m not going to tell him I’ve never even eaten at a place that made me feel the way he feels. “Can we drop this?” A ten-ton weight has settled onto my back. I start edging away.
He slows his pacing, blinks at me. “Wait! Let me walk you back,” he says, hurrying to get in front of me. When we get to the Carrot, he jams his hands in his pockets—like, Good night—then asks, out of nowhere, “Who do you imagine you’ll be when you grow up?”
I think he wants me to say president or astrophysicist—like in some movie of the week about perseverance. But I sigh and say, “University librarian,” because that’s what I’ve always pictured in my head. “What about you?” I ask reluctantly.
“I don’t know. A few things.”
“Well, I already know you aspire to be an emperor penguin. What could be more embarrassing than that?”
“Okay: fireman.”
He’s more like a firehose than a fireman—but I get it. I get why he’d want that. “Nice. You could save my library from burning.”
He smiles. He has the goofiest face. It makes me laugh—I can’t help it. For a second at least, it lets me forget how clueless he is, how bad things are.
I open the door, slide into my seat, roll down my window. It’s like one long exhale of hot air in here.
“You should eat at Greenery with me.” He’s thrust his head through the open window and gotten right up close. Too close. “You should experience it.”
I turn away, doodle on one of my earlier drafts.
“Greenery is . . .” He looks like he’s trying to grab the last word out of the air. “How about tomorrow?”
“No thanks.”
“Why not?”
“Cal.” I don’t really have a reason. It just sounds like a bad idea.
He’s bouncing on his toes. “Let’s go find her and see what she thinks.”
“Who?”
“Your mom. She’ll want you to eat at Greenery.”
I’ve got better reasons to find her than that.
JULY 8
Cal
The next day, after lunch, Mom catches me on the kitchen phone, making calls.
She waits, leaning on the counter, staring at me, while I wrap up.
“Thank you,” I say to Principal Dan. “Thanks so much.”
“Are you kidding? Thank you. So glad you called. We’ll take care of this. You were right to tell me,” he says. “It’s a big deal.”
“Okay.”
I hang up. I smile at Mom. I listen to the fridge whine and rumble. She’s back early from a shift as lunch maître-d’.
“Who was that?”
“Nobody.”
“Cal.”
“Principal at my new school.”
“Cal. Be serious.”
I shrug. “He’s nice.”
“Really?” she says, still disbelieving. “What did you talk about?”
“Stuff. School. Did you know that everyone gets free lunch, no matter what?”
“Yeah, they mentioned that on the tour.”
“And they’re getting rid of the metal detector for security next year. He said it makes kids feel like they’re in prison.”
“That’s what you talked about?”
At the end, yes, but it’s not why I called. I’m not telling Mom why I called. “Yeah,” I say.
“Cal.”
“What?”
“Who was that, really?”
&nbs
p; I hit the redial button on the phone and hold it up to Mom’s ear. “Marina Pacific Middle School, Principal Dan speaking.” I hang up. I hope he’ll think it’s a butt dial.
“Wow.” She crosses her arms and tilts her head to look at me. “I’m so impressed.”
When the staring goes on a little too long, I ask it: “Can I get a reservation at Greenery?”
“For whom?” she says.
“Me and Jeanne Ann.”
Mom’s eyebrows are way, way up, suspicious or curious or both. “Maybe. Why aren’t you wearing your new jacket?”
“I’ll go get it. I thought I could take it off in the house.”
“You can. Never mind. But wear a suit on your date.”
“Okay. It’s not a date, though.”
“Get yourself the corner table.”
She follows me out to the living room.
“You and Jeanne Ann spend a lot of time across the street, hanging out in the grass, I notice.”
I stop.
Has she figured something out?
“I like that you have an outdoorsy friend. All your old friends were indoor animals.”
“Yeah. I guess.” She hasn’t figured anything out.
“You do errands for Mrs. Paglio. You called your new principal, and you’re going on a date. What a turn of events, Cal! How do you feel?”
“Okay. It’s not a date.”
“Jeanne Ann’s good for you. A good influence.”
“Yeah.”
Once again, Mom doesn’t know what she’s saying, but she’s right anyway.
JULY 9
Jeanne Ann
Mom’s here?
This has to be a mistake. Cal’s brought me to that restaurant from a few weeks back, the one that resembles a luxury apartment. The walls are upholstered—like couches. The lady guarding the front door hisses just like before: “We wear white,” and “This is no place for children.” Is this all she can say?
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